Tag Archives: malaysia

Best known as the Malaysian winner of the second season of Asia’s Next Top Model who now walks runways around the world, Sheena Liam has also crafted a name for herself as an embroidery artist. Her delicate, minimalist art is sewn through with images of freedom and self-care.

She first picked up needlework from her mother in childhood, but only later on in her modeling career did she revisit the old-fashioned craft. It started out as a peaceful, expressive activity to keep herself occupied during downtime between jobs, but she slowly began taking it more seriously, and before she knew it she’d made a series.

“I was never really drawn to it as a practice until I started seeing all these other artists breaking boundaries with embroidered work, and I realized we weren’t bound to tradition and stagnant designs,” Liam says. Like the carefree movement of the hair detail, each piece is open to interpretation. “I’m not pushing any agenda on anyone.”

The figures in her works are often based on Liam herself, stitched with dark-green thread that stands out against the off-white linen. They can take anywhere from four days to a month to complete, depending on their size and complexity. “Sometimes I’m doing something completely new, so it takes some trial and error before I have a finished product I’m okay with,” she explains.

Each piece explores a moment in a woman’s life, from simple daily routines, like changing clothes or getting ready for a girl’s night out, to subtle moments of empowerment, like independently braiding or cutting off one’s hair for the first time. Just as she does in her modeling, her figures convey a mood or feeling through posture and pose. The free-flowing hair adds a gentle movement to contrast with the static figure, making the whole piece come alive. Though the style is minimalist, the figures are rich in detail.

“The actual embroidering is my favorite part of the process, so I try to prolong it by adding as much detail as possible,” she says. “The hair can be frustrating because I don’t have a set formula or technique. Every piece is different, and sometimes at the hair stage, which I usually do last, I might ruin a piece I’ve spent hours on.”

Inspiration comes from anything: a song, a general mood, or even a feeling. Liam compiles images from the internet onto her mini mood board and has even sought inspiration in life drawing classes. “You get to explore other different types of bodies and poses through the models,” she explains.

As someone who’s made a career out of being someone else’s canvas, here she has the freedom to express her own creativity.

In April 2017, Liam decided to share her work on Instagram under the handle @times.new.romance, a play on the name of the popular font. The handle suggests a romantic feeling of viewing peaceful modern moments fleeting by, in keeping with her art—but perhaps this writer has put too much thought into it. “I just thought it was a nice name for an account,” Liam says. The account eventually gained widespread attention from media, art-lovers, and fans, leading to her first solo exhibition, a milestone in any artist’s career.

In October, the embroidery works were presented at Item Gallery in Paris in a show also titled Times New Romance. As it happens, Liam dismissed the idea of a solo show when she was first approached about it. “I didn’t think too much of my embroidery to start with,” she says. “Honestly, it was a lot of people putting a huge amount of faith in me from the start that propelled me to work on a body of cohesive work. I had collectors and other artists who took care of me, so I could work in the capacity that I did.”

“I’m not sure. I’ve held out on a lot of projects because I wanted to be focused on creating pieces for my show. But maybe now I can relax a little and have more fun with it. If offered the right space and gallery, I’d consider a show in Malaysia. But I don’t have any pieces anymore, so it’ll probably take a few more years.”

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Bright. Bold. Brilliant. Just a few words that might come to mind when you see Daniel Adam’s photography. Currently based in Kuala Lumpur, Adam is inspired by social issues in Malaysia and by the visual stimulation of the country’s daily life, which he saturates with color and turns into something fresh. This is especially true in the vibrant photographs of his Batik series.

In this series, Malaysians of all colors, shapes, and sizes, predominantly women, are clothed in richly patterned fabric dotted with floral motifs and set against a backdrop of the same material. There aren’t any elaborate props, just designs and tones that catch the eye.

Adam first started dabbling in photography at the age of 14, armed a compact camera and a budding curiosity about the medium. His curiosity soon grew into passion, and he went on to take a degree in photography at Falmouth University in Cornwall before moving back to Malaysia late last year.

After returning from the UK, Adam felt something was missing. Having spent so much time outside of his home country, he was out of touch with his culture, and wanted a way to reconnect to his roots. For an artist, what better way to do so than to channel his feelings creatively?

Batik is a cloth-dyeing technique that originated in Indonesia, and it’s used both for traditional garments like sarongs and everyday wear such as men’s shirts. Patterns are first drawn on the cloth with a pencil and then redrawn with a hot wax made from beeswax or paraffin and sometimes mixed with plant resins. The wax acts as a “dye resist,” so that when the fabric is soaked in dye, the treated areas retain their original color, forming a contrast and thus creating the pattern.

The wax is applied to the cloth using a pen-like instrument called a canting or tjanting (in old Dutch orthography) for small dots and fine lines, a stiff brush for larger patterns, or a copper block stamp called a cap for very broad areas. After soaking, the wax is finally scraped or boiled off, and the process is repeated if there are multiple colors involved in the design. Malaysian batik differs from Indonesian Javanese batik in its larger and simpler patterns and its emphasis on brushwork. Most designs are derived from nature and are symbolic.

Daniel sourced his batik pieces from a corner shop in Chinatown for RM10 apiece, and then just started shooting. His models are set against giant sheets of batik, with clothes and headpieces made of the traditional fabric. But the portraits themselves are far from traditional, with faces of Malaysians with skin and features that show the many branches of the country’s family tree.

This blended aesthetic is fully intentional. Instead of photographing only the three “main” races of Malaysia—Chinese, Malay, and Indian—Adam wanted to break down racial barriers by including people of mixed heritage, like Chinese-Malay, Indian-Chinese, or Eurasian. What became the unifying point was Malaysian-ness itself, and batik stood in as its flag.

“I wanted to showcase diversity,” Daniel says about his series and his inclusion of every kind of race in the photographs. “I want to take away all the barriers and labels that we put on each other—for everyone to see that we just belong to one community. This beautiful and traditional art form, this design—it’s Malaysian, so it’s all linked, it brings everyone together. It’s not just about educating others and myself on batik. It’s about this connection, that we’re all Malaysian.”

It didn’t take long for this series, initially a self-education and reconnection project, to become a full-blown celebration of Malaysian diversity. On Hari Merdeka, the Malaysian Independence Day, celebrated every year on August 31, the Batik Series was on full display alongside works by two other fellow local photographers, Emma Khoo and John Kam, in an exhibition at APW in Bangsar, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur. This exhibition aimed to illustrate what it means to be Malaysian: differences were recognized, celebrated, and brought together in a single exhibition.

It was truly a moment of reconnection, as Adam fondly remembers. “It was really nice for opening night—especially since we only planned it a week and a half before the event!” he says. “You got to see different people from different cultures and religions coming together and mingling—that’s the Malaysia that you expect to see.”

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“I want to paint something that represents youth, freedom and of course, rebelliousness.”

Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Cloakwork is an illustrator and street artist who’s traveled the world in search of blank walls. His colorful murals have found homes in the streets and alleyways of Mongolia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, England, Australia, and beyond.

Cloakwork has been making street art for the last eight years, citing as motivation his “rebellious personality and trying-to-do-something-extraordinary mentality as a student.” Using vibrant colors and bold line work, he creates narrative-driven pieces with astounding details. A look at his work makes clear that each wall he paints is a work of love.

“My style is myself,” Cloakwork says. “But I am still soul-searching and exploring the world.”

The different people, places, histories, and cultures he’s encountered influence the aesthetic and creative direction of each piece. Including local culture into his graffiti has become a hallmark of his work.

“I always keep myself inspired, and I’m also endlessly interested in different cultures and countries. Every place is different and unique,” he notes. “When I paint at a spot, I usually create something that fits the surroundings to make the mundane wall into something that’s both alive and humorous.”

As in much of Asia, in Malaysia street art still hasn’t quite reached mainstream status. A lot of people remain skeptical about the artistic merits of graffiti art. Often street artists are seen as just vandals. “In Malaysia, to be honest, graffiti is still in a grey area of public opinion,” he says. “There are those who appreciate street art, but there are also some who are just following trends. But I do believe that public perception is slowly changing for the better as people become more educated and are appreciative of art. Street art is for everyone, and whether they approve of it or not, it will always be around.”

Cloakwork says that graffiti for him is a way to have fun and delight anyone who stumbles across his work. “The future is hard to predict, but I feel I’ll keep doing graffiti until my body tells me to stop,” he says. “So why is street art so irreplaceable to me? Perhaps that’s the answer.”

If you’re lucky, perhaps one day on your travels you too might just stumble across one of his colorful pieces.

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The story goes like this: in a gorgeous world drawn from a fantasy or a dream, a faceless girl is floating in an unfamiliar place. She’s been searching, longing to find a way out of this strange land, but she keeps tumbling down again and again, constantly tumbling down.

This colorful and expressive music video is a collaboration by Malaysian animator Yan Dan Wong and Swedish animator Annalotta Pauly. Their images are accompanied by the upbeat melody of Vulfgang Rainstorme’s recent track “Semblance.”

“I was approached by a Canadian artist, Vulfgang Rainstorme, for a commission for an animated music video for a song on his new album A Yellow Spot,” says Wong. “When we found out that the album was dedicated to his late mother, we thought of themes of loss, searching, feeling incomplete, and finding peace to let go. So we thought of a narrative about a faceless female character embarking on a journey to look for something or someone.”

This kaleidoscopic world full of challenges is all in the girl’s mind. Her quest is a healing process. “Grief creates a hole inside of you. We sometimes experience unfathomable sadness, but not everything is bad all the time. The world the girl finds herself in is neither good nor bad, it just is,” Wong explains. “After getting reassured by the memories of a lost loved one, the girl gets the courage to dive down through the dark and stormy waters, and she ends up at the surface again.”

“She finds herself in the place where she started. Maybe not much has changed, but she knows she’s stronger now. You can’t avoid grief, but you can work through it. That’s our understanding of the music video.”

The girl eventually ends up in the same place of shelter—the only difference is that she’s found what she was looking for. After crossing through grief, she’s again recovered her face. She’s no longer the person she once was.

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Okui Lala, real name Chew Win Chen, is a fourth-generation Chinese Malaysian. Living in a country well known for its multicultural makeup, Chew is a multimedia artist who explores issues of language, migration, and identity through photography, video, and performance art. Today, we meet up with her in Penang’s Komtar Tower, a once iconic landmark in George Town that the state’s tourism board does not want to give up on despite dwindling public interest.

Inside the shopping mall, 80s brutalist architecture adds to the grimness of the unoccupied storefronts. It’s here where many of the city’s migrant workers set up their grocery stores, restaurants, and hair salons. It’s also here where many of the city’s Filipino workers send parcels and remittance back home to the families they left behind. Young Burmese men gather in the poorly lit eateries sprinkled throughout the mall, chatting over cigarettes and tea on their only day off.

In 2015, Chew started working with Burmese migrants on a piece called Let’s Drink and Eat Tea! One of the standout tutorials of the series was a live performance of making lahpet thoke, a simple Burmese appetizer. In the tutorial, Chew learned how to prepare the dish via translated instructions. The normally quick-to-prepare dish took thrice the time to cook as Burmese was translated into Malay, and then Malay translated into English. The video aims to demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of using translation as a tool for understanding.

Let’s Drink and Eat Tea! kickstarted Chew’s thought process on her latest project – My Language Proficiency, a short film in which she holds a panel discussion with herself in Malay, Mandarin, English, and Hokkien. Confronted with an art scene that’s often segregated by language barriers, Chew wanted to explore what intellectual discourse would sound like in a multicultural society if everyone could have a seat at the table and speak in the language that they are most comfortable with. The project also examines the deep influence that history, education policy, migration, and upbringing have on a person’s choice of language.

As we wander around Komtar, Chew notes how the two waves of Malaysia’s migrants intersect – the “official faces” of Malaysia’s multiculturalism (Malays, Chinese, Indians), and the second influx of foreign workers from Myanmar and the Philippines. “There is xenophobia among our rakyat,” Chew says, using the Malay word for citizens, a word that is usually associated with patriotism and unity on a national front.

In light of recent news of Malaysia’s racial segregation, the country was slapped with a temporary ban from the Indonesian government, stopping the intake of Indonesian workers as a reaction to cases of abuse and the death of an Indonesian maid. Penang itself, with its cosmopolitan past as a trading port, enforced a ban last year on foreign cooks in efforts to protect the authenticity of its famed hawker fares. But Penang’s food, a tourist draw on its own, is a byproduct of Chinese and Indian Muslim traders assimilating with the local culture. The irony was lost on a majority of Malaysians who voted in favor of the ban.

“We’re in George Town, and we have a lot of fixed ideas about what George Town’s heritage is,” says Chew, reflecting on the almost aggressive ownership Penang’s heritage center holds on what it deems as authentic. She says that the new wave of migrant workers is viewed by many locals as “the ‘others’ who will come and take over our jobs”.

“We haven’t really overcome xenophobia on a social level. How are we going to handle these issues [related to migration policies]?” she questions when asked if she feels pressure to take a social justice angle to her work with migrant workers. Chew’s work urges one to turn inwards with self-reflection to better understand and receive others, to see that their cultural influences are equally important contributions to the make-up of a Malaysian identity.

“Myanmar migrants are new migrants but can the culture that they bring with them be considered heritage? I like this old and new contradiction,” she muses. The constant stream of languages that appear in Chew’s work, be it familiar or foreign, holds a lens to the complex identities of old and new migrants that have chosen Malaysia as home. And perhaps importantly, in an age of Brexit and Trump, Chew’s work implores for acceptance of self and of neighbor.

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OAG, which stands for Old Automatic Garbage, was formed on Christmas Day in 1992 and was one of the first English-language alternative rock bands to enjoy mainstream success in Malaysia. They first came from the underground music scene and were initially influenced by seminal 60’s rock bands such as The Velvet Underground, The Beatles, and Pink Floyd.

The band’s big break came when they signed to Positive Tone and released their debut album, Old Automatic Garbage, in December 1994. The album went far beyond anyone’s expectation at the time, eventually going triple platinum and helping spark off the alternative music scene in Malaysia. Their hit, “60’s TV,” has become one of the most recognizable alternative rock songs in Malaysia, and the song’s accompanying music video also helped signal a new creative direction for music videos in the country. The band would become well known by Malaysian audiences for their exciting live performances and catchy tunes.

The success of their first album was followed up by a critically acclaimed, dance-inspired EP, Melody Mocker, and the band was also enlisted to write and perform the theme song for the 1997 FIFA World Youth Championship. The two albums that later followed in 2002 and 2003 respectively, Opera Radhi-o Friendlyand Satelit Ink, were recorded in their native Malay language as the band tried to attract a bigger Malay audience.

Since then, the band went through a few lineup changes and a couple hiatuses. Founder, lead vocalist, and guitarist Radhi Razali says that one of the challenges for rock music in Malaysia is that people still underrate rock bands at times. Radhi tells us, “The music industry in Malaysia is very diverse and [the music is] getting weirder, bigger, bolder, crazier. There’s a lot of new experimental stuff coming in by the young newcomers, but rock is still always here. Rock is tough. Rock will never die in Malaysia!”

The band just celebrated their 25th anniversary last year and marked the occasion with a special concert in Kuala Lumpur at The Bee Publika, combining old and new members alike. The current generation of OAG is the fifth generation of the band, with Radhi Razali on vocals and guitar, Qi Razali on drums, Muhamad Nizam on guitar, Nazrin Zabidi on bass, and Izmer Khasbullah on keyboards. “I’m hoping it’s also gonna be the last generation of OAG because I’m getting old,” Radhi says, “I might look like a 16-year-old Jackie Chan, but I’m 39 years old already!”

Cheddar, Camembert, Gouda, Gorgonzola, Reblochon… These cheeses, in all their moldy, funky glory have been prevalent throughout our rich history with food, but nowhere else in the world is it more ingrained than in European food culture. Take the little Swiss town of Gruyères for example, in which a certain eponymous cheese has been its economic heartbeat for the past twenty decades. Or walk into any cheese shop in Paris, and you’ll find a steady stream of locals sniffing out and purchasing the rows and rows of Brie de Meaux, creamy Camemberts, funky Époisses, great moldy wheels of Roquefort, and many other suspiciously over-ripened, unlabeled cheeses. Cheese has always been synonymous with European culture, there’s no doubt about that.

In the past decade however, there’s been a quiet cheese revolution pervading through Asia, with artisanal cheesemakers like Liu Yang of China and Tina Khan in India paving the way for a greater appreciation for cheese in their respective countries. In the midst of it all, Malaysia has had its own surge of cheesemakers too, with artisans popping up in Kuala Lumpur, Sarawak, and even Langkawi. Most notably, Annisa Iwan, an Indonesian cheesemaker now residing in Kuala Lumpur, has managed to combine her strong base of European cheesemaking methods with a local agenda (she sources her milk locally, adapts her recipe to the Malaysian climate, and sells her cheese to a largely Malaysian clientele). And through her punnily-named Milky Whey Cheese business, she’s been steadily converting many local cheese doubters into lifelong cheese aficionados.

Full disclaimer: I am one such convert. As a self-professed cheese lover, I initially had large doubts about how cheeses made from the milk of Malaysian cows could ever begin to compare to the great Gouda, Cheddar, and Parmigiano-Reggiano of Europe. But as Annisa has proven, I was dead wrong.

Not only are her cheeses up to par with those stalwart Europe cheeses, her experimental, almost zany, approach to cheesemaking has many Malaysians heaping on praises. Some of her Tomme cheese wheels, for instance, have been spiked with bird’s eye chilies just to kick the piquancy up a notch to satiate the spice-loving Malaysian palate. She’s even infused local produce like bamboo leaves and Sarawak peppers into her cheeses, the latter of which she uses in a soft-style cheese she adoringly named Sarawak.

Raised in Indonesia, Annisa’s indoctrination into the world of cheese started at a young age. Her family had close ties with a Dutch family who visited every winter bearing gifts. “I still remember the three things they [the Dutch family] would bring – chocolate, pâté, and cheese. Those three things, even now, I still cannot live without!” Annisa recalls fondly. Although she no longer keeps in close contact with the Dutch family, those foods, especially cheeses, have clearly left a mark on her very being. Annisa likens it to drugs, saying “[It’s like how] you can’t just introduce crack to somebody and stop giving [it to] them. Cheese is addictive!”

Checking on a young bird's-eye-chilli-infused Tomme cheese wheel. / 查看加入了鸟眼辣椒的多姆奶酪成熟与否

A bird's-eye-chilli infused Tomme cheese wheel. / 一整块已成熟的、加了鸟眼辣椒的多姆奶酪

While she has always been a cheese eater. Annisa’s true cheesemaking obsession came after her honeymoon in Italy, where she had Mozzarella di Bufala for the very first time. To Annisa, those gooey, pillowy mozzarella balls she had in Rome were the epitome of love at first bite. Understandably then, when she returned home, the lackluster faux-mozzarella balls sold at her local supermarkets were never quite able to satisfy her in the same way. Frustrated by this, Annisa resorted to making her very own mozzarella.

Little did she know at the time, she’s picked one of the most temperamental cheeses in the world to make. Heat it too much during the curd formation process and you’ll get empty, watery mozzarella shells; stretch it too much at too low a temperature and the cheese will resemble plastic-y squash balls. After many spectacular failures (which she often turned into halloumi or ricotta) and no end in sight, it was one of her French cheese mentors who pulled her out of this mozzarella spiral and got her working on other, simpler cheeses like the Welsh Caerphilly and Swiss Tomme. That was when her cheese-making prowess truly burgeoned. After mastering these simpler cheeses, Annisa quickly grew confident enough to try her hand at making longer-aging cheeses like Cheddar and Montasio. She then dabbled with making bloomy rind cheeses like Brie and Camembert, and finally came full circle back to mozzarella, which this time around, was a roaring success! And the rest, as they say, is history.

Since the beginning, Annisa’s business has only gone from strength to strength. In 2012, she started by selling her cheeses at festivals and bazaars around Kuala Lumpur and offered cheese-tasting session out of her small home in Mont Kiara. But with a great boom in business over the past two years, she now supplies her cheeses to many top restaurants in the city. Through it all, however, her focus has always been on keeping it personal and artisanal, satisfying all who steps into her home with her warm hospitality and infectious love for the cheesemaking craft. She especially loves introducing her cheeses to (read: blowing the minds of) local Malaysians who’ve never had a whiff of cheese in their lives, and on the other end of the spectrum, European expats craving for a genuine taste of their home country. And as far as I know, she’s never failed to impress.

Well, it’s only a matter of time before all of Kuala Lumpur, if not Malaysia, gets caught up in the heady, funky, but oh-so-addictive world of Annisa’s cheese. So here’s to a cheese-filled, funked-up future for Malaysia! All the Brie-est, Annisa!

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At the edge of the quiet, unassuming village of Kampung Sungai Petai, a half-hour drive out of the rich historic hub of Malacca, lies Bendang Studio, a contemporary ceramics workshop that is making waves in the industry. Having started from humble beginnings, its founder Rozana Musa has developed her own brand and a style of tableware ceramics that’s now highly sought after in Malaysia. Not complacent in entrepreneurial success alone, Musa aspires to mold and fire the Malaysian ceramics scene into a new era.

Musa’s initial encounter with ceramics came early in her childhood when she unwittingly stumbled upon the core ingredient of ceramics – clay. As a child, she often played with the carmine, clay-rich mud on the riverbank, behind her grandmother’s Malaccan home, sculpting skyscrapers and drawing shapes in the sand and silt. Little did she know, this childhood pastime of hers would translate to a deep-seated love for ceramics in her adulthood. Now, rather than building transient sculptures in the sand, she creates intricate ceramics with a touch of modern flair.

At Musa’s studio, each piece starts off as a specially tailored clay mixture, containing a blend of silica, feldspar, kaolinite and a slew of other minerals. Then, depending on the particular piece, the clay will either be cast in a mold, shaped by hand on a pottery wheel, or cast and then finished off by hand. The product from the shaping process is then left to dry for several hours before being baked in a kiln at 840°C for six hours through a process known as biscuit firing. The brittle “biscuits” are then cooled for a day before being colored with a glaze through a subsequent firing process at 1100°C for eight hours. All the recipes for the glaze are developed by Musa and her team, using metal oxides such as cobalt, copper, sodium, and calcium as dyes. Though each piece is somewhat planned, Musa admits she and her team often improvise on the fly, especially when they’re struck by moments of artistic inspiration.

This free, unshackled approach can be seen throughout her studio – a splash of cobalt blue on an ivory plate, a shimmering gold brushstroke on the lip of a teacup, an embossed batik print on a china tray. Even her studio itself exudes this sense of unbridled freedom; The airy, glass-fronted facade, the high ceilings and brick walls painted in hues of white, the plates and bowls haphazardly stacked on low tables, all the while her cats sashay around the displays, jumping from table to table, weaving in between the dishware, while her apprentices, Nisa and Aliah, work with quiet focus and intent at their pottery wheels.

Browsing through her wares, one gets the sense no two pieces of Musa’s ceramics are the same. Each of her creations has its own beauty, its own flaws, and its own identity. At first glance, they all seem too beautiful to use, but their beauty belies a utilitarian sturdiness. Perhaps this combination of beauty and utility is the driving factor behind the surge of demand for her line of ceramics, so much so that she’s now often booked up months in advance with order requests from renowned restaurants throughout Malaysia, and even some from Paris and Japan!

Despite Musas’ current success, her road to where she is was wrought with challenges. Like most young Malaysians, pursuing such an unconventional career wasn’t really on the cards in her young adulthood. But then, through perhaps a stroke of serendipity, she enrolled in the art and design program at the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), choosing to major in ceramics. When she graduated, however, Musa found it difficult to advance her skills or come across opportunities for work, largely due to the immaturity of the Malaysian ceramics industry. Finding a mentor was difficult, demand for handcrafted ceramics was slow, and the equipment and barriers to entry were high (a ceramics kiln alone can cost upwards of 3,000 USD). According to Musa, of the dozen or so students who graduated along with her at UiTM, only one or two still remain in the craft. Fortunately for her though, she eventually found a mentor in Umibaizurah Mahir Ismail, an established Malaysian ceramics artist whose works have been featured in exhibitions in Japan, Korea, and Pakistan.

After just several months of apprenticeship, Musa was inspired to start her own business, and thus Bendang Studio was conceived. She started off small, selling trinkets and accessories to a very niche market. Not long after, she wanted to expand her business, but being bootstrapped, buying an industrial ceramics kiln was out of the picture. Undeterred and being the self-starter that she is, Roza enlisted the help of her ex-lecturer at UiTM to build a fiberglass kiln from scratch. This move not only saved money, but her design was so innovative it won them an award that came with more than 4,000 USD in prize money from the government. And for the past seven years, Rozana has continually reinvested her profits, along with the winnings, back into her studio, buying a new kiln, and more recently, refurbishing the whole space. Rozana’s dedication and innovativeness have turned Bedang Studio what it is today – an impressive studio that’s leading the way for Malaysian ceramics.

Musa’s studio sits right by the through road between Malacca City and Kampung Sungai Petai, two vastly different places, one being a bustling, cultural city, and the other, a secluded, relatively unknown village. The location is perhaps fitting, as Musa’s brand of handcrafted ceramics has connected two similar yet separate worlds – the commercial, utilitarian mass-market ceramics industry, and the niche artistic, dreamy space of ceramic artists. Over the past years, Bendang Studio has brought glimpses of that artistic world to the mass market, with restauranteurs clamoring over her wares before they are even made. Perhaps it is a sign of changing times, of a greater artistic appreciation for ceramics, of the fledgling state of the handcrafted ceramics scene in Malaysia maturing into something significant. Musa certainly hopes so, and if her recent growth is anything to go by, there will certainly be more cobalt splashes and golden brushstrokes to come.

It’s 7 a.m. The sun has barely risen over the sleepy town of Gunung Rapat, but already, Uncle Liow is sweating profusely. His lone figure silhouettes against plumes of smoke snaking out of the four self-made brick furnaces of his ramshackle biscuit workshop-hut, the air heavy with the bittersweet scent of burnt caramel and coconut husk. Around him, rays of light stream down through holes in the makeshift rafters, the chiaroscuro illuminating balls of dough arranged neatly on the table to his side, patiently waiting to be baked off. Uncle Liow shovels more coconut husks into the furnaces, fuelling the growing pyres of flame. Then as the fires subside and the coconut husks turn into perfumed cinder, he takes in a long drag of his cigarette, picks up a dough ball and plunges his hands into the 300°C brick furnace, baking off the first of 1,200 heong peahs for the day.

Though biscuit shops and confectionaries aren’t all that uncommon in Malaysia (after all, the neighbouring city of Ipoh is well known for its egg tarts, kaya puff biscuits, and lotus paste buns), Uncle Liow’s workshop makes, and have only ever made, one particular type of biscuit – the legendary heong peah, which literally means fragrant pastry in Hokkien. They’re flaky, delectable puff biscuits filled with oozing, sinfully thick malted caramel. Its outermost layers are often charred to a deep golden brown, while the caramel inside remains glisteningly moist. It’s akin to a lighter, flakier, Asian version of a Breton Kouign Amann, with a heavier caramel hit.

Despite having a Chinese moniker, these biscuits first gained recognition in Malaysia back in 1981 when a second-generation Chinese couple started Yee Hup, a small biscuit workshop based in Gunung Rapat. Yee Hup specialized in heong peah, which until then had only been a niche, sparsely sold biscuit of the region. They developed and improved upon the traditional recipe and baking method, and in less than a decade, their heong peahs gained a cult following throughout Malaysia. Bakers and biscuit-makers around the region soon joined them, wanting to learn their ways of biscuit making. Soon after, with Yee Hup’s growing popularity came the desire to scale up production, but with the traditional methods requiring much effort and manpower, they eventually turned to mechanization and moved to a large-scale factory setting.

Uncle Liow was one of Yee Hup’s very first workers, and after many years of toil, he rose up the ranks to become one of their stalwart bakers. But when Yee Hup upscaled their business, he parted ways with the company as he wanted to preserve the artisanal methods of biscuit-making. And today, despite having labored over heong peahs for over 30 years, he remains true to his belief, never once faltering and submitting to the less-laborious, profit-driven modern methods of biscuit production. According to Uncle Liow, to get the truest, best-tasting heong peahs, two things are needed – a searing hot furnace fueled with coconut husks for that musky aroma and char, and more importantly, solid technique, which he clearly has a wealth of.

Watching him work is truly mesmerizing. To make the heong peahs, Uncle Liow braves the 300°C heat of the cylindrical brick furnaces, sticking each piece of dough to the searing hot furnace walls in one deft movement. All the while, the hissing flame at the very bottom of the furnace licks at his fingertips, vaporizing the sweat on his hairless, burn-scarred arms. He works in a trance-like state, dancing around the furnace. His brows are furrowed; his hands in and out of the fire with fluid speed and purpose, stopping only to wipe away the beads of sweat collecting on his temples. His focus is palpably intense, as any slip-up would immediately result in painful third-degree burns. Only when every inch of the inner walls of the furnace has been filled with heong pPeahs does he allow himself breathe and take in a few drags of his cigarette as they bake off. Barely ten minutes later though, he is back at it again, this time with a scraper in hand to pry the biscuits off the furnace walls and onto cooling trays, ready to be checked for quality, packaged, and sold.

Together, with his team of five employees who helps him in making, filling, and packaging the biscuits, they bake off thousands of heong peahs every day in his humble workshop. They work tirelessly 12 hours a day, six days a week, which is admirable, to say the least, given the intensity and laboriousness of this artisanal business. However, Uncle Liow’s diligence and dedication have definitely paid off, as his workshop (362 Heong Peah) has over the years become a stand-out among the slew of biscuit shops and confectionaries in the area, garnering many loyal customers who travel from all over the country just to get his freshly baked biscuits.

Although Uncle Liow’s heong peah business has continued to thrive over the years, other artisanal biscuit-makers have not been as successful, either succumbing to the ever-growing pressure to turn to modern, less laborious methods or having to close down their businesses due to old age and the laboriousness of the process. Thus, 362 Heong Peah now remains one of the few, if not the only artisanal heong peah workshops left in Malaysia, which reflects the unfortunate ravages of mechanization on the humble artisanal biscuit trade. However, despite the current state of the industry, Uncle Liow remains loyal to his mantra that flavor is king, and as such, he believes there will soon be a new wave of young artisans to take up the mantle of reviving and elevating the near-lost art of handmade heong peahs.

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Tang Xiao Ming is a Malaysian illustrator with a passion for editorial illustrations and visual storytelling. His illustration series, The Major Arcana, is an editorial approach to the twenty-two card tarot suit. Often used for divination and occult purposes, the Major Arcana has been understood as an archetypal system for psychological and spiritual advancement and has been reinterpreted by numerous artists since its invention in the 15th century.

Tang’s interpretation of the Major Arcana series was a stepping stone for his personal style, which brought about its own challenges and rewards. He tells us about the creative process behind the series: “As an artist, sometimes you’ll run into a brick wall creatively, but it’s only temporary and it has the potential to change your life. It’s only from being stuck that you will start to think differently, and your creative process is forced to change. Because of this, it will unlock further possibilities in life and work.”

Growing up in Malaysia, Tang was influenced by his society’s lack of awareness towards mental health. Instead of drawing influence from local Malaysian art and culture, he focuses on the psychological struggles of young people as a consistent theme in his work. Tang says, “In Malaysia and most of Asia, mental illnesses and psychological factors are not widely talked about – because of this, I think that many of my illustrations are themed around the mind and the emotions, because many of us do not know how to express ourselves or understand who we really are inside.”

Some of Tang’s early influences include notable comic artists Olivier Coipel and Stuart Immonen, as well as graphic novels like Watchmen. Currently, he identifies his primary influence as visual artist James Jean: “Jean’s paintings deal with the unknown – they are very emotionally driven. They relate to me and inspire me to do what I’ve always loved to do, which is to create. I hope that my creativity will, in turn, inspire others and allow them to understand the way that I feel.”